Dream of Mirrors
by Sevejar Locke
Summary: Whenever Naruto was in trouble, her image was the one to bring him back to reality. Now that it's her turn to face oblivion, he stands besides her, a mirror of what she was to him. NarutoKurenai, oneshot.


_**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto or Iron Maiden's Dream of Mirrors._

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_Uzumaki Naruto, by order of the orphanage director and chief medic of the Konoha hospital, you are rid of your ability to be taken in the orphanage. Your awful behavior and rude demeanor towards the other children is despicable and…_

_Have you ever felt the future is the past, but you dont know how...?  
A reflected dream of a captured time, is it really now, is it really happening? _

Naruto never read the rest of the letter they had left at his bed. He never had to. He had known what it said, and knew that he would never need to go back in that spirit-forsaken place again. All that he had left in the world was taken from him. He was alone. Utterly and completely alone in the whole world. Nobody to love him. Nobody for him to ever love. And the eyes… The eyes of the villagers, full of hatred and malice and fear.

He spent the next day crying. Alone and scared. He was the five years old, still a child without a family. Day after day, isolation ate at him, wearing him down; he slept at the streets, hid whenever the shinobi passed along. He just hid and hugged himself to sleep, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would wake up and have people to love him. That was all. A bad dream, one that would end with him sleeping in a weird-smelling carton box.

Alas, reality always has a way to strike at you. He woke up the next day in the same position he had been, miserable and hungry. All he wanted was to be loved, yet everybody hated him. All of them. All.

The sudden consideration became an obsession, so the child ran.

_Dont know why I feel this way, have I dreamt this time, this place?  
Something vivid comes again into my mind.  
And I think Ive seen your face, seen this room, been in this place  
Something vivid comes again into my mind. _

He made it to the forest, and then to a lake, and then to a village, and became lost in awe. A social order without leadership, destination or future. People just involved themselves in their own lives. Here he was, wanting to become their subject. He slept rough for the next two days, but he was well used to sleeping on hard substances by now. His blazing blonde hair became unclean and wild, and Naruto kept his head hung a lot to cover up his facial, whisker like, marks. Food was not a problem, either. Nature had provided him with whatever he needed so far, and two kind old women stuffed him with adoration and candies as long as he ran to the bakers or did other chores for them.

And then, exactly a week after he left, he felt like belonging. Finally, he began to feel like he belonged somewhere. The other children didn't mind him, and even dragged him down in their plays and mischiefs.

The village could have been the home he never had, had things not gone disastrously wrong.

Kurenai was her name. She had long, flowing dark hair, pale skin and Chinese shaped, crimson red eyes. She was a swiftly climbing through the ranks, fifteen year old kunoichi. She had found him with the aid of a small group of other chuunin, but they had her go fetch him with civility, as the orders the Hokage had given them.

So, as Kurenai walked towards the terrified blonde boy, she could not help but they were wrong. All of them, all of those that spoke badly and looked at the boy with vile intent were wrong. He was just a boy, she had thought. They were not evil themselves, and neither was the small boy in front of her. They were just… Misunderstood. Not caring what the orders that she had been given said, Kurenai knelt in front of the fearful child.

"Hello, young man. I'm here to take you home." She had said, with a perhaps too sweet voice. Still, it was calm, and one would reason that she was speaking logically. Naruto did not follow logic, though, and he did not care for Konoha, not since they had abandoned them. He spat at her with all the hate he could muster, and she looked at him with a hurt expression.

_All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation  
Have I found my destination? I just cant take no more._

"I don't have a home back there!" He yelled, but did not ran, thus ruining the statistics the chuunin group had gathered for the encounter away. Kurenai, on the other hand, was calm. Other shinobi her age would have leashed out for such an insult, but she was calm, methodic, and ruthless when it came to her duties as a kunoichi.

"That was rude, Naruto-kun." She said, cleaning her face with a handkerchief. The boy opposite of her pouted. "I would appreciate it if you did not do so again. Now, could you tell me what makes you think that you don't have a home back in Konoha?"

The boy did not respond, and lowered his head in response.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Were they picking on you?"

"Why do they have to be so cruel?" he whimpered with a tired voice. "I only want to be loved like the other children. I want to be with them, but they only hate me and walk away from me. Why can't I be normal?"

"You mustn't think like that, Naruto." said Kurenai, who had been informed on the case. She knew of the Kyuubi no Yoko, the great demon that resided inside the blonde boy. Thus, she tried to answer him in the best way she could. "You're very special. I saw it in you when we first met. You have the power to change the world for better or for worse. That's what makes you different from everyone else. You have that power, nobody else does. It doesn't make you hated, Naruto. It makes you special."

Naruto tried to keep those words with him the rest of his life.

When they had taken him back in Konoha, Sarutobi, the third Hokage, had lectured him about leaving, but had done nothing else. Naruto had to grow up as a person, not a weapon, despite what the council said, and he planned to make him satisfied no matter what. A home that was going to be all his was a way to start. Finally, Sarutobi had asked of him to speak. And he did spoke twelve words that would make Sarutobi laugh and laugh like he had never done so before.

"I'm going to be special, you know. Like you. Like a Hokage."

_The dream is true, the dream is true._

So, when he felt hardships in his life, Naruto had glared and refused to be put down.

When Mizuki yelled that he was a demon and that he deserved to die, Naruto conjured the face of his second most precious person standing along with the one he cherished the most; Yuuhi Kurenai, the crimson eyed kunoichi that had comforted him. And he had flat out won against a seasoned shinobi by summoning a legion of his own determined self. When Kakashi called him a dead last, it was an image of Kurenai smiling at him that made him charge at the jounin blindly.

The equation was repeated throughout his life.

Whether his opponent was Zabuza, or Haku, or Orochimaru, or Kiba, or Neji, or Gaara, or Kabuto, or his best friend and comrade Sasuke, all Naruto had to do was think of Kurenai kneeling in front of him, her delicate hand on his shoulder, and her own face centimeters away from his own to gain the courage and determination to pulverize the one that badtalked him and his dreams. Finally, when Naruto stood against the Akatsuki member Kakuzu, his collecting of images and precious persons faded. There was only anger now; anger that the dead looking missing nin was standing between him and the bastard that killed Kurenai's love. He brutally decimated Kakuzu before getting up and rushing where his friend's battle is taking place.

_Think I've heard your voice before, think Ive said these words before.  
Something makes me feel I just might lose my mind.  
Am I still inside my dream? Is this a new reality?  
Something makes me feel that I have lost my mind_.

All his life, Naruto was protecting others. Never himself. It was not the sense of invulnerability that came with the regeneration the demon fox offered him, no; it was the feelings that boiled up inside him when Kurenai offered him her hand and took him home.

_All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation.  
Coming to the realization that I cant see for sure._

Finally, a still recovering from his battle Naruto limped his way to the cenotaph, the training field that had given him so many fond memories. He was surprised to see Kurenai there, to say the least.

"Kurenai-sensei?" he managed to ask, quite perplexed.

She turned, surprised, and he saw that she was crying. He saw her eyes and gasped.

She was hurt. The one person she had loved was dead; along with many others ghosts of the past. For the first time, his blue, innocent eyes found the motivation they needed. She couldn't bear to look at him, to have someone so important to the village see her like this. She didn't see his eyes mold all the hatred of the world toward Akatsuki. Fighting her tears, she looked at him. Naruto's fist was trembling, and it began to rise, almost involuntarily in grace. Smoothly, swiftly, Naruto grabbed a kunai. His eyes flared bright now with no humanity found looking in them. They were crimson as well, a hue similar to the one her own eyes possessed.

_I get up put on the light, dreading the oncoming night.  
Scared to fall asleep and dream the dream again.  
Nothing that I contemplate, nothing that I can compare.  
To letting loose the demons deep inside my head._

The Kyuubi.

The blonde lifted the kunai and stabbed his own hand as he had done another time on the past, spilling his own blood. "My own offering to the dead." He said. "I swear to the pain in my right hand that I will protect you, Kurenai-san."

When his eyes returned to their normal look, Naruto looked into Kurenai's eyes. And, slowly at first, but building to a heartbreaking level, he began to cry like never before. And he would never cry again. And Kurenai would ran at him and hug him and they would sob together; making unspoken promises and admitting feelings to each other. They would both come to realize that they could not be together, no matter what.

And in the years to come Naruto would protect Kurenai, her child, and the village with a fervor that no one else could muster. A fervor that he usually reserved for slaying his opponents. He would have the gratitude of Kurenai forever. Not her love; she could not offer him her love, and they both knew that. All she could give him were just gratitude and thanks. And that would be enough. Because to her eyes…

He beautiful, red eyes…

He is still _special_.

_The dream is true, the dream is true._

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_That… was weird. A oneshot, with such a uncommon pairing as well. A song fiction, to boot. I could not help it, though; I mean, the one that comforts Kurenai is Shikamaru. And, while I appreciate the lazy Nara, it is annoying how Naruto does not get the gratitude he used to have anymore. Woo… Anyhow. I got the basic concept of those two being together, yet not being together (wink wink, nudge nudge) after reading Antiassasin's latest work. Go read it! _

_As a last thing, Ways of an Assassin are going well; expect the 3rd chapter to be out sooner than later. Until then, though, enjoy and review my own latest work._


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